Milestones in the History of Polyhedra

Abstract

Considering the fact that polyhedra have been studied for so long, it is rather surprising that there has been no exhaustive study of their history. But we are very lucky that the authors of four modern classics on the theory of polyhedra—Brückner, Coxeter, Fejes-Tóth and Grünbaum—were interested in historical information and provided detailed historical notes in their books. I propose to present an outline of the milestones in the history of the subject, putting together the thread of what happened as the theory developed. I will pay special attention to regularity concepts.